


Good Life

by LookinGoodTodd



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Bad Decisions, F/M, Friendship, I'm Sorry, Reminiscing, This Is Not Going To Go The Way You Think, Tony Stark Is Not Helping, Why Did I Write This?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-10
Updated: 2019-02-10
Packaged: 2019-10-25 08:50:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,133
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17722016
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LookinGoodTodd/pseuds/LookinGoodTodd
Summary: J doesn't know much about futures. She never really thought she'd have one, and she never really wanted one—not past eighteen, at least. She knew how difficult and scarring her life would be. But now she's twenty-six, eight years over her expected life-span and she can't believe how much she doesn't want to die.





	Good Life

**Author's Note:**

> Okay. So this chapter is kin of dull, but it's just build up for the fun stuff. Sorry for all the errors, I'm just dumb. I will probably update this pretty soon. Enjoy!
> 
> Disclaimer: all of the characters in this work belong to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, or my OCs, which belong to me.

CHAPTER ONE

Warm. I was warm all over. My toes tingled as uncomfortable heat spread through them, slowly running up my calves to my knees. Then the feeling shot up my thighs like bullets, racing through the rest of my body until everything was so fucking hot, and my heart was pounding, pounding, pounding, in my chest.  
Then, there was pain. Echoing throughout every part of my body like a scream, so intense that I couldn't ignore it.  
My eyebrows furrowed into a confused line, the corners of my mouth quirking downward. What’s wrong?  
The red-hot feeling twinged from my side and I glanced down, frowning. A dark liquid stained the bottom edge of my sweaty shirt. Hands shaking, I reached down and poked at the gooey substance. It dripped from my fingers in near slow motion as I pulled my hand back towards my face to peer at the liquid. Drip, drip, drip.  
Blood.  
I sucked in a shallow breath, my eyes widening. What the f—?  
“J?” My name echoed through my head like a warning. I looked up, tucking my trembling hands into fists at my side.  
The person who had said my name stood facing me on a crumbling brick wall, arms crossed over her chest. Her red hair swung in the wind, crackling in the bright sun like it was full of electricity. Her dark eyes squinted down at me and she jumped, with a muffled thud, off the wall, stepping towards me. Her chest was rising and falling steadily, as if she had run a marathon. Her shoulders were taunt and her fingers flexing and un-flexing—her body bubbling with anxious energy.  
I took another deep breath—suddenly finding it annoyingly difficult to focus on anything beside the throbbing in my side.  
Natasha crossed the abandoned courtyard to look me up and down, “J. We’re done. What are you doing out here?”  
“A guy,” I choked out, voice shivering, before clearing my throat and continuing, “tried to get away. Snuck out the…back door. I tried to catch him.”  
Her eyebrows furrowed, “did you?”  
I blinked over at her. Damn, it's hard to focus with a bullet jammed in your ribs.  
She took another menacing step forward—Black-Widow mode taking over. “J, did you catch him?”  
I shook my head, “no. He…” desperately I gestured to my side, my hands shaking. Now it was getting hard to talk. We needed to regroup and get back to base soon—hopefully before I fainted from the loss of the sticky liquid coating my fingertips.  
Her beady eyes zoomed in on my side, and I watched as her lips quivered the slightest bit—the only response I got from my stoic friend as she dropped to her knees in front of me and pulled up my shirt to examine the shot. I shivered in the frigid air, but took a shaky breath and closed my eyes, letting Natasha prod the wound.  
She and I had met years before in a small alley off the coast of Italy—both of us on cases, both of us struggling to keep our heads above the heinous, shitty water of organized assassination. 

June 22, 1998, Sorrento, Italy

I turned the corner, panting, my feet slapping against the uneven stone pavement of the dark alleyway. My heart was pounding hard in my chest, but I was oddly calm for someone being chased by a crazy man with a gun. I pushed hair from my face and panted to a stop, leaning over myself. Pushing myself up, I turned to the entrance of the alley where I had just come from, my gun pointed steadily at the empty space, eyes squinted.  
A loud sound echoed from the other side of the cramped space, and I swiftly turned towards it, gun still pointed where I knew a mildly insane, gun-wielding governor would soon run through.  
At the other end of the alley, a woman had just jogged into the dark corridor, her dark red bob lightly smacking her in the face as she ran. In her hands she held a small handgun. When she saw me, she froze, her dark eyes narrowed. She quickly raised her gun towards me, and I swung mine to point at her—ready to shoot each other squarely in the chest.  
Suddenly, a man burst around her corner of the alley, and she turned with a grunt. He grabbed her arm and twisted the gun from her grip. She held on for a split second, before he kicked her eggs out from underneath her and the metal object went sliding across the pavement. She hit the ground with a whine, and rolled onto her feet, so smoothly she looked like a break dancer, gliding around the huge goon as he threw useless punch after punch towards her head—she dodged each one.  
A thud of footsteps sounded behind me, and I turned just in time to see Mr. Fucking Governor turn into alley, a gun clutched in his fists. I raised my own gun, aiming towards his chest and—  
He leaped at me, knocking the thing from my hands and dropping his own weapon in the process. He grabbed me around the neck and tossed me towards a open dumpster. Closing my eyes and wincing, I felt myself slam against the metal dumpster’s wall, my back cracking painfully. I groaned, but didn't give myself time to relish in my own pain, I rolled to my side and tried to inch away from the annoying little asshole who just wouldn’t leave me alone, knowing my snail pace wasn't going to help me stay alive, but unable to move faster due to the quickly spreading pain in my lower back.  
He grabbed me by the hair and pulled me up to face him, his bloodied face an inch away from my own, his salmon-scented breath blowing across my face.  
“You've been following me, you little bitch?” He rasped, sending more bad breath my way. My face crinkled into a frown. His eyes grew even more steely, “who sent you?”  
I squinted at him, growling out an answer, “fuck you.”  
He roared, shoving me to the pavement, and watching as I whined out in pain. He placed a foot against my chest and glared down at me, “who. Are. You. Working. For?”  
I groaned, “okay, okay, don't hurt me, please…” I begged, my voice raising an octave to sound my distraught, more scared. Inside I was perfectly calm—the plan was going pretty well. So far.  
He laughed at me, his wide shoulders shaking as he threw his head back—his first mistake—and reaching over to grab his gun—his second mistake.  
I seized the opportunity to bring my knee up on his balls, hard enough to leave lasting damage. He grunted in surprise, and I rolled out from underneath him, pushing myself to my feet and racing towards the middle of the alley where my gun had slid.  
Behind me, I heard the man shout, but I ignored him and struggle to reach my gun. In front of me, the red-headed woman was still fighting off the her own big problems. The man had somehow gotten them in a position so his gun was in his hand and hers was a few feet away. His beefy arm was wrapped around the woman’s torso, holding her in place, and hers was pushing his other hand holding the gun away from her body.  
I watched as she sunk her heel down into his foot with enough force to break skin. He dropped her with a howl of pain and she slid to where her gun was, her fingers stretching out just far enough for them to brush the handle, before the man above her grabbed her ankle and aimed his gun at the back of her head.  
“Bye, bitch.”  
There was a rush of wind behind me, and I heard a pistol cock behind me and before I could think, I was jumping out of the way, slamming my side up against the brick wall of the alley. A shot rang out behind and I watched, almost in slow motion, as the man above the red-head was suddenly thrown back, a bullet ripping his chest open. I didn't take my time in watch him thud against the ground, no I grabbed my gun and turned to the governor, firing town shots at him. One hit him squarely in the chest, the other in his shoulder. He crumbled to the pavement. A beat of panting quiet rested between the red-headed woman and I. Slowly, I raised my hot pistol towards her, aiming it gently at her head.  
The woman squinted at me and dove for her gun. I was a mere second behind her, trying to push the weapon away from her and figure who the Hell the was and why she was here.  
I grabbed her arm and ripped her away from the gun—but she was stronger than I expected. She barely moved. Her sleeve rode up as I tried to wrestle her away from the weapon.  
A gorgeous, cursive BW were carved into her wrist in fading black ink, standing out on her pale skin.  
My eyes widened and I looked up at her, my lips parting, “черная вдова?”

 

“J?” Natasha hissed to me, looking up at me with expressionless eyes from where she crouched in front of me, “J, pay attention.”  
I swallowed, and nodded, unable to find my voice through the clinching in my chest.  
She shook her head at my bleeding side, “it's pretty deep and it's in a bad place. You're losing a lot of blood. We need to get you back to S.H.I.E.L.D. as soon as possible.”  
I blinked down at her. Her words were barely registering in my mind—everything was muddy and dull and my head felt mushy. She sighed. She knew that when I was in pain I went into lockdown mode, my thoughts trapped in an endless spiral through my mind—like my life was flashing through my eyes, even if it was only a simple cut or shallow bullet wound.  
“J. Фокус! Нам нужно вернуться на базу.” She said, reverting back to a Russian, knowing that in times like this it was easier than English for me to understand. I nodded dully.  
“Can you walk?”  
I nodded, “it's just a small wound…I'm okay…Natalia…”  
She shook her head and grabbed my shoulder, gripping me and forcing me to walk faster. After we made it to the opposite side of the courtyard, she huffed out a slightly nervous sigh.  
“This is going to take too long. ты умрешь к тому времени, как мы доберемся до машины.” She hissed out.  
She reached up with the hand not helping me to pull down her headset and press her fingers against a button on the sleek, black piece, “Stark.” She barked. My heart twisted in my chest and I frowned.  
“Natalia, don't get him involved, I'm really not that hurt…”  
She shushed me with a dirty look, and repeated his name into the microphone on her headpiece, “Stark, please pay attention.”  
There was another beat of silence, then I heard the other side crackle on and a whisper of Tony Stark’s voice, “Widow! What's happening down there? Your crew is on a plane to headquarters without you. You running away, Spider? ‘Cause Fury isn't really in a great mood for that today. Guy’s been bitching since I walked in the door.”  
Natasha rolled her eyes, “a guy got away. We don't know what he knows. And J got shot. Bad.”  
There was a static-y silence on the other side of the line, and I deftly wondered if Tony even cared. I frowned at myself. Why do I care if he cares? That made my frown only deepen.  
“So…what do you need me to do?” All of the joking tones were pretty much gone from his voice and he seemed down to business now.  
Natasha shook red hair from her face and pulled out a phone from her pocket, turning it on and continuing to speak to Stark as she fiddled with it, “I need your fastest private jet. I'm texting you the address. Hurry. Get a doctor and someone who can pull out bullets. Quick, Stark, I mean it. She's losing a lot of blood.”  
“I'm right here, you know,” I whined, leaning into Natasha’s side. They both ignored me.  
“Okay, I'm on my way.”  
Natasha frowned, “Hurry, Stark.”  
“I'm hurrying, Widow.”  
Then my head got fuzzy, my eyes started to droop, and despite how hard I tried to keep myself awake, I felt myself slipping into an anxiety-filled, unconscious state.


End file.
